Progression
On March 21, 1918 the Railway Administration Act became law, and Wilson's 1917 nationalization order was affirmed. Wilson appointed his son-in-law, Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, as Director General of the newly formed USRA.
The law guaranteed the return of the railroads to their former owners within 21 months of a peace treaty, and guaranteed that their properties would be handed back in at least as good a condition as when they were taken over. It also guaranteed compensation for the use of their assets at the average operational income of the railroads in the three years previous to nationalization. This act laid down in concrete that the nationalization would be only a temporary thing; before, it was not defined as necessarily so.
Both wages and rates for both passenger and freight traffic were raised by the USRA during 1918, wages being increased disproportionately for the lower-paid employees, which proved unpopular among more senior ones.
With the Armistice in November 1918, McAdoo retired from his post, leaving Walker Hines as the Director General.
Read more about this topic: United States Railroad Administration
Famous quotes containing the word progression:
“Measured by any standard known to science—by horse-power, calories, volts, mass in any shape,—the tension and vibration and volume and so-called progression of society were full a thousand times greater in 1900 than in 1800;Mthe force had doubled ten times over, and the speed, when measured by electrical standards as in telegraphy, approached infinity, and had annihilated both space and time. No law of material movement applied to it.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)